Corrado Alvaro
Encyclopedia
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
journalist and writer of novels, short stories, screenplays and plays. He often used the verismo
Verismo
Verismo was an Italian literary movement which peaked between approximately 1875 and the early 1900s....
style to describes the hopeless poverty in his native Calabria
Calabria
Calabria , in antiquity known as Bruttium, is a region in southern Italy, south of Naples, located at the "toe" of the Italian Peninsula. The capital city of Calabria is Catanzaro....
. His first success was Gente in Aspromonte (Revolt in Aspromonte), which examined the exploitation of rural peasants by greedy landowners in Calabria, and is considered by many critics to be his masterpiece.
Biography
He was born in San LucaSan Luca
San Luca is a comune in the Province of Reggio Calabria in the Italian region Calabria, located about 100 km southwest of Catanzaro and about 35 km east of Reggio Calabria. The town is situated on the eastern slopes of the Aspromonte mountain, in the valley of the Bonamico river...
, a small village in the southernmost region of Calabria. His father Antonio was a primary school teacher and founded an evening school for farmers and illiterate shepherds. Alvaro was educated at Jesuit boarding schools in Rome and Umbria. He graduated with a degree in literature in 1919 at the University of Milan
University of Milan
The University of Milan is a higher education institution in Milan, Italy. It is one of the largest universities in Europe, with about 62,801 students, a teaching and research staff of 2,455 and a non-teaching staff of 2,200....
and began working as a journalist and literary critic for two daily newspapers, Il Resto di Carlino of Bologna
Bologna
Bologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of Northern Italy. The city lies between the Po River and the Apennine Mountains, more specifically, between the Reno River and the Savena River. Bologna is a lively and cosmopolitan Italian college city, with spectacular history,...
and the Corriere della Sera
Corriere della Sera
The Corriere della Sera is an Italian daily newspaper, published in Milan.It is among the oldest and most reputable Italian newspapers. Its main rivals are Rome's La Repubblica and Turin's La Stampa.- History :...
of Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
.
He served as an officer in the Italian army during World War I. After being wounded in both arms, he spend a long time in military hospitals. After the war he worked as a correspondent in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
(France) for the anti-Fascist paper Il Mondo of Giovanni Amendola
Giovanni Amendola
Giovanni Amendola was an Italian journalist and politician, noted as an opponent of Fascism....
. In 1925, he supported the Manifesto of the Anti-Fascist Intellectuals
Manifesto of the Anti-Fascist Intellectuals
The Manifesto of the Anti-Fascist Intellectuals, written by Benedetto Croce in response to the Manifesto of the Fascist Intellectuals by Giovanni Gentile, sanctioned the unreconcilable split between the philosopher and the Fascist government of Benito Mussolini, to which he had previously given a...
written by the philosopher Benedetto Croce
Benedetto Croce
Benedetto Croce was an Italian idealist philosopher, and occasionally also politician. He wrote on numerous topics, including philosophy, history, methodology of history writing and aesthetics, and was a prominent liberal, although he opposed laissez-faire free trade...
.
In 1926 he published his first novel L'uomo nel labirinto (Man in the Labyrinth), which explored the growth of Fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
in Italy in the 1920s. A staunch democrat with strong anti-Fascist views, Alvaro's politics made him the target of surveillance of Mussolini
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
's Fascist
Italian Fascism
Italian Fascism also known as Fascism with a capital "F" refers to the original fascist ideology in Italy. This ideology is associated with the National Fascist Party which under Benito Mussolini ruled the Kingdom of Italy from 1922 until 1943, the Republican Fascist Party which ruled the Italian...
regime. He was forced to leave Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
and during the 1930s he traveled widely in western Europe, the Middle East
Middle East
The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...
, and the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. Journeys he later recounted in his travel essays. L'uomo è forte (1938; Man Is Strong), written after a trip in the Soviet Union, is a defense of the individual against the oppression of totalitarianism
Totalitarianism
Totalitarianism is a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible...
.
After World War II Alvaro returned to Italy. He again worked for prominent daily newspapers as special correspondent, theater and film critic, and editor. He was elected secretary of the Italian Association of Writers in 1947, a post he held until his death in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
in 1956.
Literary career
Initially, Alvaro's literary efforts did not enjoy great success. Critics praised his first novel L'uomo nel labirinto (Man in the Labyrinth) for its portrayal of alienationSocial alienation
The term social alienation has many discipline-specific uses; Roberts notes how even within the social sciences, it “is used to refer both to a personal psychological state and to a type of social relationship”...
of individuals and society as a whole. His subsequent works, L'amata alla finestra, Gente in Aspromonte, La signora dell'isola, and Vent'anni established him as an important writer. A jury that included the noted Italian novelist Luigi Pirandello
Luigi Pirandello
Luigi Pirandello was an Italian dramatist, novelist, and short story writer awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1934, for his "bold and brilliant renovation of the drama and the stage." Pirandello's works include novels, hundreds of short stories, and about 40 plays, some of which are written...
awarded him a prize of 50,000 lire given by the newspaper La Stampa
La Stampa
La Stampa is one of the best-known, most influential and most widely sold Italian daily newspapers. Published in Turin, it is distributed in Italy and other European nations. The current owner is the Fiat Group.-History:...
in 1931 for Gente in Aspromonte.
In 1951 he won the Strega Prize
Strega Prize
The Strega Prize is the most prestigious Italian literary award. It has been awarded annually since 1947 for the best work of prose fiction by an Italian author and first published between 1 May of the previous year and 30 April...
(Premio Strega) – Italy's most prestigious literary award – for his novel Quasi una vita. Alvaro is noted for his realistic, epic depictions of the Italian poor. His later work portrayed the contrasts between a yearning for the simple, pastoral
Pastoral
The adjective pastoral refers to the lifestyle of pastoralists, such as shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasturage. It also refers to a genre in literature, art or music that depicts such shepherd life in an...
way of life, and the aspiration to achieve material success that attracts people to the city.
He was one of the first authors to mention the 'Ndrangheta – the mafia
Mafia
The Mafia is a criminal syndicate that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct, and whose common enterprise is protection racketeering...
-style criminal association in his native Calabria – in several short stories and in an article published in the Corriere della Sera in 1955.
Works
- Polsi, nell'arte, nella leggenda, e nella storia (1912)
- Poesie grigioverdi (1917)
- La siepe e l'orto (1920)
- L'uomo del labirinto (1926)
- L'amata alla finestra (1929)
- Vent'anni (1930)
- Gente in Aspromonte (Revolt in Aspromonte, 1930. Won the prize of the newspaper La StampaLa StampaLa Stampa is one of the best-known, most influential and most widely sold Italian daily newspapers. Published in Turin, it is distributed in Italy and other European nations. The current owner is the Fiat Group.-History:...
in 1931) - La signora dell'isola; racconti (1931)
- Maestri del diluvio; viaggio nella Russia sovietica (1935)
- L'uomo è forte (Man Is Strong, 1938. Won the literature prize of the Accademia d'Italia in 1940)
- Incontri d'amore (1940)
- Viaggio in Russia (1943)
- L'età breve (1946; first novel in the series Memorie del mondo sommerso)
- Lunga notte di Medea, tragedia in due tempi (1949)
- Quasi una vita. Giornale di uno scrittore (1950. Winner of Strega PrizeStrega PrizeThe Strega Prize is the most prestigious Italian literary award. It has been awarded annually since 1947 for the best work of prose fiction by an Italian author and first published between 1 May of the previous year and 30 April...
1951) - Il nostro tempo e la speranza. Saggi di vita contemporanea (1952)
- Un fatto di cronaca. Settantacinque racconti (1955)
- Colore di Berlino. Viaggio in Germania (2001)